Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Black Agenda TV, Season 1, Episode 5
BATV
21 May 2014
🖨️ Print Article

Katrina Was a One Time Disaster, Detroit Will Be Replicated Many Times

Half the black population of New Orleans was exiled in the wake of Katrina, the result of neoliberal politics and a chance hurricane. But the dismemberment of Detroit's black metropolis is a model that the capitalists can replicate over and over across black America.

Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition evaluates the Obama presidency

President Obama “has been worse for the African community than Bush,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition, which will hold its annual national conference August 16 and 17, in Philadelphia. “First of all, Bush couldn’t have gotten away with what Obama gets away with. He’s neutralized so many forces – taken them out of action.” “He’s played the African community, his most loyal constituency,” said Yeshitela, appearing on BlackAgendaTV.com. “The only thing he’s done is criticize Blacks in the most callous, reactionary kind of way.”

For a growing number of African Americans, the Obama “spell has been broken.” However, too many Americans of all ethnicities think that politics consists only of elections. “What has been defined as politics locks us into imperialist space,” said Yeshitela. “At the moment when Africans and other people begin to look for alternatives to the Democrats, then some Negro will step forward to lead us back safely into the embrace of the system, through the Democratic Party. Jesse Jackson did that” in the 1980s.

The Shrinking Political Vision of African American leadership

BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon on how the political souls of black America's political class have shrunk to fit their hands.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Immigration flight graphic
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Trump Africa Policy: Imperialism, Resource Extraction, and Deportations
    25 Jul 2025
    Our guest is Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan African Newswire. He joins us from Detroit to discuss the Trump administration policy towards Africa, including the recent visit of five African heads of…
  • Canada and the US
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Vassal State Canada Partners with U.S. Imperialist and Neo-Liberal Policies
    25 Jul 2025
    El Jones is a poet and a professor at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She joins us from Halifax to discuss Canadian politics and relations with the US. Despite…
  • Pindiga Ambedkar , Arnold August
    Were Canadian Elections Existential in the Context of US-Canada Tensions?
    23 Jul 2025
    Interview with Arnold August, writer, political commentator, and analyst of the North American continent, on the political situation in Canada and its relationship to the US.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Black Agenda Report At the Belt and Road Journalism Forum in China
    23 Jul 2025
    The 2025 Belt and Road Journalists Forum in China was an opportunity for Black Agenda Report to join an international group of journalists working to promote meaningful dialogue on world issues.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    SPEECH: Why We Use Violence, Frantz Fanon, 1960
    23 Jul 2025
    “This violence of the colonial regime…irreparably provokes the birth of an internal violence in the colonized people.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us